Destination Brono.

Brno Travel Blog

trencin is a small town somewhere in the midle north of slovakia. My plan was to travel with a couch to Brono. I started with no money and i had no idea how to go there. Slovaks dont talk much english and that make the whole adventure even more interesting. Failing to find the bank I though id use the cash point at the train station which is next to the cauch station. There where few busses to brono but after a long body language communication with very basic english-slovak, the bus driver convinced me that the best thing to do was to take a bus which was leaving now and change to another place. So i entered the bus hopeless to undestand exactly what was happening :)

My problem just started. I needed some money in slovak and some in czech money because i had to change bus. and obviously you can't get exchange from a cash machine. The Inspector changed my slovak money to czech on the bus by asking other passengers and made sure to tell a girl to look me after on the bus exchange :). I was very impressed and greatfull for such help. "dobre dobre !"

On board I was using the iphones gps position to see where im going. I had to make sure to visit a place with open wifi first to load the map image on google maps. The landscape was fantastic. Sunflowers everywhere and nice warm green colors. I couldn't imagine czech or slovakia would look so beautiful in the summer time. At the same time the iphone was scanning for open wifi. Very impressed by the number of open wifi.

Finally i ended at brno. First thing i did was to take i picture of a road sign to have it as reference so i could find the couch station again. Also i saved it on google maps as a placemark for easy access. Then I had to find if there's anything worth seeing there. My first destination was a near by shoping center to get some czech money and find a wifi to get access to the maps and locations.

I visited a tower an open market and some other places. (you can see photos) Its a nice place to go for a day trip. There's a scary old nuclear plant outside the city that made the scenery somehow for me.

After walking in most of the cities places, I started to get hungry, so I hoped google maps on the iphone will show me where i could eat. Google doesn't have all the places on the maps, but you can identify areas with bigger density of restaurants. So i did and discovered a big main square with many nice places to sit for coffee or food. They made the best pizza every in my life. I used iphone to access google translate and translate the menu to english, so even without my slovak friends I could order ! :)

Coming back was an adventure. Using iphones maps i managed to navigate back to the couch station on time to depart to trencin. I thought Id give it a go and return on train, but it was MAD to understand the time table. With the iphone i know how far i was and i could track my location in case I was heading the wrong way.

So with the widespread of wifi and devices like the iphone makes mad unorganized adventures possible. Biggest problem ? Running out of battery :)